The present invention relates to firearms, and particularly to a safety device for use in connection with repeating firearms utilizing box-like removable magazines.
Many repeating firearms utilize replaceable magazines which, when in place in such a firearm, exclude dirt, sand, and the like from entering internal mechanisms and doing damage or causing failure of the firearm to operate properly. When the replaceable magazine is not in place in such a weapon, however, the loading mechanism and other movable parts of the weapon are exposed to contamination by material carried by the air or otherwise found in the immediate environment.
Some firearms, particularly automatic firearms such as the self-loading M-16 rifle used by the Armed Forces of the United States, have ejection ports through which empty cartridge cases are ejected upon firing of the weapon. Although the ejection port in many self-loading weapons is another potential point of entry for contaminants into the working mechanisms of the weapon, the M-16 rifle is equipped with a hinge-mounted cover which may be closed to protect the internal mechanisms of the rifle against such contamination. Thus the M-16 rifle, when a magazine is in place and the ejection port cover is closed, is relatively well-protected against contamination.
Safety is of prime importance in conducting military training exercises. For the sake of safety, however, soldiers have been permitted to carry an M-16 rifle during some military training exercises only with the magazine removed, the ejection port cover open, and the bolt withdrawn rearwardly to an open position exposing the breech of the firing chamber, so that it could be clearly seen that the weapon was unloaded and not able to be fired, either accidentally or otherwise.
While use of the M-16 in such training exercises was thereby made safe, the working mechanisms of the rifle were thereby exposed to possible contamination. Particularly when these requirements for the sake of safety were carried out during exercises performed in desert sand conditions, the weapons were exposed to entry of contaminating materials which caused a significant number of the weapons to malfunction in later use, unless internal working mechanisms of the weapons were carefully cleaned first. Such cleaning requires an undesirably long time for readying such basic infantry weapons for service use after their use in training exercises.
It is necessary to be able to carry out training exercises safely, but without excessive risk of damage to weapons, and without requiring an unduly long period of time to make weapons ready for actual use thereafter.
Not only is it desirable for weapons to be in a safe condition during military training exercises, but it is also desirable that such a safe condition should be easily and quickly verifiable from a distance of at least several meters, so that it is quickly obvious to a commander if any of his men's weapons have not been properly made safe.
While a weapon may be made safe by removal of an essential part such as a firing pin, such a procedure has two problems. First, it may be difficult to verify that the procedure has been actually carried out and that the weapon is no longer capable of being fired. Second, there is a risk of damage or loss of a part which has been removed from its proper location, so that it would be difficult or impossible to restore the weapon to its normal useful condition.
Prior efforts to provide a way to make a firearm safe from accidental firing without disassembly of the weapon include a chamber plugging device shown in Robbins U.S. Pat. No. 2,997,802. Robbins discloses a device usable particularly in a bolt action rifle to plug the firing chamber and interfere with closure of the bolt of such a weapon. The Robbins device, however, has no provision for preventing entry of contamination through a magazine well of an automatic-loading weapon from which a magazine has been removed as a safety measure.
McKinlay U.S. Pat. No. 3,089,272 and Hermann U.S. Pat. No. 3,605,311 disclose key-locked devices which fit inside the receivers of automatic-loading shotguns and similar automatic-loading weapons. The devices close the empty case ejection port and prevent the bolt from closing the breech of such a weapon. The McKinlay and Hermann disclosures, however, make no provision for protecting the working mechanisms which may be exposed upon removal of a box-like magazine from automatic-loading weapons. Additionally, the McKinlay and Hermann devices would seem to be clearly visible only from the ejection port side of weapons in which they are installed.
What is needed, then, is a device which will positively prevent a weapon, particularly an automatic-loading weapon such as a military rifle, from being fired accidentally, and which will make it easily verifiable visually, from a considerable distance away from the weapon, that the weapon is incapable of being fired. Such a device ideally should be straightforward, inexpensive, and easy to use, should allow the weapon to be made safe without thereby exposing internal working parts to contamination, and should leave the weapon quickly able to be made reliably ready for firing without disassembly and cleaning.